Tuesday, June 13, 2006

We traveled to Denver, Colorado last week, and I snapped this oddly alien photo of a tent. It's not the Denver airport, which has a similar topping, but rather a catering tent at a private school where our nephew was graduating. I have never visited a private school before, and on this trip, we were immersed in the activities of two. Both nephews were graduating, one from 9th grade and one from high school.

At the recognition dinners and graduation ceremonies, the teachers and the students spoke at length about the wonderful educational experiences that the classes had shared, and each student was profiled with laudatory speech-ifying. By the end of the weekend, I was beginning to distrust the speeches - all the students had exceptionally happy lives and were all perfect students who had excelled in everything they had attempted?? But of course, no one would want the failures aired. We did get an odd kind of thumbnail sketch of each student, which we amplified by meeting some of them, and hearing the parents' talk at the grad party.

Among other things, we also learned about lacrosse, and that frisbee is now a competitive team sport. We saw a dvd of a school play called "Groovy", where 9th graders dressed in tie-dye shirts and granny glasses and spouted "power to the people".